


Rhythm Of The Rails

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, On the Run, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 06:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10870890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: There’d be time enough to work out the details before things became urgent. Probably.





	Rhythm Of The Rails

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/gifts).



The buzz of the proximity alarm woke Maria from a restless sleep. She had the ICER tucked in her back waistband and was reaching for the tablet almost before she had her eyes open.

In the next room, she heard Laura’s gasp as she woke, disoriented by the strange bed and the unexpected warning.

“Maria?”

“Wake the children and get them moving. Take the exit out through the block next door.” She kept her voice calm, even as she cursed the setup of the safe-house. It wasn’t her first choice of location, especially with three young children in tow. But the discovery of HYDRA’s fingers in S.H.I.E.L.D’s pie had cut down her options significantly, and now with Ross’ goons on the trail of anyone who could be used against the renegade Avengers...

She checked the feeds and grimaced at the paucity of their information. They hadn’t been able to install infrared sensors at this place, so she had to squint at the vague shadows of the video as the background of the kids’ grumbling at their mom. Beneath it, though, she could hear the grind of the cement tiles against each other on the sloped roof...

Maria rose, taking out the ICER in the small of her back. It activated at her touch, the safety mechanism humming softly. She stepped towards the door in the next room, weapon held at the ready.

Footsteps in the doorway behind her made her turn enough to see Lila emerge from the room, still rubbing her eyes fitfully as Laura herded her out. Nate was bundled up tight across Laura’s chest, while Cooper trailed behind his mother and siblings, his lower lip protruding in a pout, but as yet obedient to his mom.

Maria made a pushing gesture towards the bookcase, and Laura unlocked the secret door and swung it open fluidly. They’d tested the hinges the first night they stayed here, oiled them until there was no squeak.

Not so anything else in the house.

In the next room, the window sash slid up, not quite soundlessly, but with a steady control that wasn’t casually acquired. Whoever was trying to infiltrate this place, they were _good_ at what they did. 

Maria looked at Laura, met her urgent and concerned gaze.  _Go!_ She mouthed. She was going to buy time for Laura and the kids to get out and away; to take the car they’d parked in the basement of the brand new apartment building to the side.

They’d had the opportunity to get away yesterday, but she’d kept the Bartons here one more night, hoping to hear back about further options – and because the kids were distressed and uncertain and afraid. Their world had been uprooted – first by Clint’s abrupt departure, then by his continued absence, and then by Maria turning up on their doorstep to upend their lives.

Maria had figured one night would give them a chance to settle down – enough time to take a breath – and wouldn’t make a difference if someone was pursuing them..

She’d figured wrong.

As the bookcase swung closed behind them, Maria took up position in the darkest corner of the room, her bare feet planted on the floorboards, feeling them creak as the intruders came in one by one, trying to determine how many there were.

At least two, she thought, both moving quietly. There might have been more, but Maria wasn’t afforded the chance to determine. The first shadow moved through the doorway, the set of his shoulders showing that he held a weapon. Handgun, with the muzzle pointed down at the floor – oddly amateur for such a professional entry into the house. The second shadow was the merest hint of taller and broader behind him, and they lined up so perfectly...

Maria shot them both.

The first man went down, but the second barely checked as he lunged into the room – big and fast-moving, the dimmed light from the street outside showing a thick jaw blurred by a beard. She shot him a second time, he stumbled. Before she could shoot him a third time, the gun was torn from her grasp. She stumbled backwards and found herself pressed back against the wall, an invisible force holding her in place as she gasped, first with shock, and then in a struggle to breathe. Something was pressing against her throat, and she wheezed once, groping at the empty air around her neck—

The pressure on her chest eased, then vanished, as did the grip on her throat. She sank to her knees, sucking in a deep breath and trying to work out where he gun had fallen. Her brain, still in survival mode, tried to put pieces in their proper place, even as the man she’d tranked twice huffed and grunted as he rolled up onto his knees.

Maria stared at him, caught by the familiarity of the way he moved.

She looked to the man she’d first tranked. He was still down on his back, but by the faint scarlet glow still emanating from the hands of the woman standing over him, she saw his chest rise and fall as he exhaled hard. The rush of air expelled in familiar exasperation sucked the breath from Maria’s own chest as she recognised it.

A shrill ululation rang through the room, and a smaller shadow raced out from the corner of the room with the bookcase, screaming an eight year old’s futile war-cry.

“Cooper—!” Maria lunged, missed the trailing tail of Cooper’s pyjama top by inches as he threw himself at the woman who stood in the doorway, her hands still trailing a scarlet glow. The kid got one punch in – right in the abdomen. And Maximoff bent over double, but – thank Christ – didn’t strike out at him.

“Cooper!” Clint grunted as he lunged for his son, catching the boy up – or trying to. His balance was still off, and he grunted as Cooper got a fist in, still caught up in attack mode, screaming and panicking, and not recognising his dad.

“That’s enough!”

There was a click, and the lamp in the corner turned on, temporarily blinding Maria – and probably everyone else, too.

When her eyes had adjusted, Lila was running across the room to her father, squealing nearly as only a four year old girl could do. Maximoff had straightened up with her back to the door frame, and Rogers was climbing to his feet, a sheepish expression on his face as he looked from Maria to Laura Barton who was making her way from the open bookcase and the passageway to her husband.

Clint was trying to get to his feet with a kid in each arm while still dizzy from the trank. He gave up as she stood over him.

“Honey, I’m home?”

“You couldn’t have knocked?” Laura asked Clint drolly before she knelt down and hugged him. 

Maria told her adrenalised nerves to calm. False alarm, nothing to worry about, just an untoward entry.  _Thank God._

She looked at Steve, noted the beard growth and the tight set of his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

His expression caught somewhere between amusement and frustration before he retorted, “And it’s always nice to see you, too, Maria.”

* * *

It was a long night, and the kids were sprawled asleep across their parents’ laps long before Clint, Steve, and Wanda reached the part where Ross had the others locked up for aiding and abetting Barnes’ escape.

Clint spoke sparingly of the Raft, one arm around Laura’s shoulders as she nursed Nate, the other hand on Cooper’s back. The pose make it look like he was visibly drawing strength from their presence, and the truth probably wasn’t that far off. The pinch about Wanda’s mouth, and the deadly coldness in Steve’s eyes said everything about the facility that they didn’t voice – as well as the absence of Wilson and Lang.

Maria listened in silence, asking no questions, making no judgements, just letting them get the entire story out without interrupting. Some of it she’d worked out, some of it she’d had to guess, but by and large...

One more epic clusterfuck of a situation in which the Avengers were involved.

“Did you know about it?” Steve asked when the story lapsed. “The Raft, I mean.”

Maria didn’t drop her gaze. “Suspect? Yes. Know? No.” She shrugged. “There’ve been rumours about such a facility ever since the Abomination was put on ice. I figured it was more noise than reality.”

“You figured wrong,” Wanda said sharply.

“I did.” Maria looked to Steve who was still watching her with unnerving intensity. “How did you find it to get them out?”

“A coded drop in one of my accounts – old S.H.I.E.L.D protocols. I thought it might be you.”

Maria snorted. “Ross would never have trusted me with anything about the Raft. I worked with the Avengers for a year while I was at Stark Industries – I’m compromised at best, and a traitor at worst.”

“Natasha?”

“Same situation, only worse,” Maria pointed out. “She’s a member of the Avengers and a Russian turncoat on top of it. My bet is on Vision, actually.”

Wanda was shaking her head. “If Vision had known, he would have told me—”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Steve said. “He was the one who brought up the prevalence of supernormal attacks when we were discussing the Accords.”

“I didn’t know about those either,” Maria interposed dryly, since the question was probably going to come up sooner or later.

Steve gave her a hard look.

“That seems unlike you.”

“I’m working from behind the eight-ball now – and Fury’s in much the same boat. In some ways his situation is worse – his contacts think he’s dead, so his intel is non-existent as compared to merely resentful. And S.H.I.E.L.D under Coulson isn’t what it was. Their concerns are slightly different right now – they don’t have the resources we had before the takedown to deal with things that don’t affect their own investigations.”

“So why would Vision know about the Raft?”

“Because he was Ultron,” Maria said. “Because the first thing you do when you’re establishing the parameters of protecting the world is to work out whether the biggest players currently on the field are a threat or an ally, and if they might become a threat, you determine how to take them out. The Raft has been on Ross’ radar since Banner first turned into the Hulk; the last four years just gave him the political and financial support he needed to make it a reality. And I guess that once the Accords were signed into existence, Vision recognised that sooner or later someone he knew was going to not only find their way in, but need a way out.”

Abruptly, she felt exhausted by the events of the night, the struggle to get the Bartons out, the hopscotch of uncertainty – unable to stay anywhere, unsure that she’d gotten the Bartons away successfully but having to trust, waiting for contact from someone...anyone...

Still, there were a few things details they hadn’t fully explained.

“Wilson and Lang?”

The looks exchanged between them said a lot, even before Steve answered. “We figured not all of us were needed to escort Clint to his family, and Sam had some friends he could stay with. Lang accepted the invitation – they’re limited without their tech, anyway, and Sam said he wanted a break from Avengering.”

Maria was willing to bet that it went a little further than that, but she didn’t ask for details.

If Clint and Wanda hadn’t been forthcoming about what happened in the Raft, Maria didn’t need the specifics. She’d seen the accounts of Ross’ dealings with anyone who got in his way. She could guess what Sam had been through on the Raft with Steve and Barnes on the loose and Ross determined to get them back.

_I’m going to contain the superhero threat,_ he’d told Nick Fury to his face nearly six months before S.H.I.E.L.D went down.  _Not tip my cap and pander to them!_

Frankly, Maria was surprised Fury had let Ross walk out of that meeting with all his teeth.

_First thing to understand about assholes, Hill,_ he’d said on the way back to the Triskelion.  _The world divides into us and them; and ‘they’ are never good enough to be granted all the rights and respect that assholes demand for themselves._

“Natasha?” Clint asked.

“Looking up old acquaintances. On account of other old acquaintances.”

She looked at Steve who looked squarely back at the reference to Barnes. Not that Maria expected him to spill all – or, indeed, anything – about Barnes’ present location. Although, given Steve’s presence here, wherever he’d left Barnes, it would be safe by his standards.

Clint frowned a little, but just asked, “She’ll keep in touch with you, I take it?”

“When she can.” Maria wasn’t about to demand check-in times for the Black Widow; Natasha would proceed at her own pace, in her own time, and she’d contact Maria as she needed to. After so many years, they each knew how the other worked, and how to interact without disrupting anything important.

And looking for the old KGB files on the techniques which had made the Winter Soldier into a killer on demand was not going to be easy – either in terms of finding them, or in terms of the effect on Natasha, whose own brainwashing in the Red Room had taken a good half-year to undo when she came into S.H.I.E.L.D. Still, she’d been willing to hunt for the intel, and as a bonus it would put her out of the reach of the American authorities for a while.

In his mom’s arm, Nate roused with a quiet grumble, and they all turned to look at the baby and the sleeping children, holding their breath. After a moment and with a slow wave of his fist, the kid went back to sleep.

“Might be time to get some shuteye,” Clint said. “We spent most of yesterday evading border security on the way in, and most of today avoiding highway patrol. Wanda had to play Jedi mindgames with them to throw them off the scent.”

“And I don’t know how long it will hold,” the young woman said bluntly. “They might wake up and suddenly remember us. We did not exactly blend in.”

Steve turned to Maria. “How long were you planning to stay here?”

“We should have moved on yesterday. Laura and I figured the kids could do with two nights in one place.”

“We’ve been on the move for nearly ten days,” Laura murmured.

“It shows,” Clint remarked, with a grin and a nudge.

She nudged him back in a place that made him wince. “I wouldn’t throw stones,  _honey_ .” 

Maria rolled her eyes. “We’ll move you on tomorrow – now that Clint’s here, we can get you to longer-term safety.” Maybe. Hopefully. If Fury contacted her with the update on wherever it was that he was looking into for the Bartons. In the meantime... “Go to bed, you two. And take your kids with you. Wanda, you’ve got the couch; Rogers, the floor.”

_The bed is large enough for both of us, and I promise not to jump you._

_Actually, I prefer the floor; I sleep on it back at the Tower._

_You sleep on the floor at the Tower?_

_I don’t sleep when I’m in the bed._ She’d blinked, her mind going places it had no business going, and he’d laughed and blushed all at once.  _I don’t do whatever you’re thinking, either._

_Turning psychic now?_

_No, just heading that off before it becomes a rumor. I’m not seeing anyone, Maria._

_And I’m not about to tell anyone that you aren’t. So we’re all good._

Wanda was frowning. “And you’ll be sleeping...?”

“On the rug.” She’d slept on worse in the last week, particularly the first two nights when Cooper and Lila had refused to share a bed, and Maria had taken the floor. Laura had put her foot down on the third night – the Bartons had shared the bed, and Maria had gotten the single.

Over on the couch, the Bartons were finding themselves with too many children and not enough hands, so Maria got up and carefully eased Lila from Clint’s lap. She’d become accustomed to handling the kids in the last week, from holding hands as they crossed the road, to answering the umpteenth question once Lila lost her shyness around her and Cooper realised she’d worked at Stark Industries for a year.

She helped ease the sleepy little girl in beside her brother so the two could curl up together like puppies.

“That’s new,” Clint muttered as Cooper lifted an arm and Lila snuggled right in under it.

“They’ve had to share more often than not,” his wife replied. “And they’re scared.”

“They’re not the only ones,” he muttered and bent his head to kiss her.

Maria turned to make a quick exit, and found Steve standing at the door with a backpack in hand, his expression a mixture of envy and embarrassment. She stepped aside so he could put it down, and followed him out to the other room where Wanda was laying out a bedroll. Another one was untied, but the third was put to the side, unneeded.

“You already had a bed on the couch,” the young woman pointed out as she unzipped a backpack and pulled out a small, ragged toiletries case. “I will use the cushions off the others. And Steve sleeps anywhere.” The look she shot Steve as he closed the Barton’s door behind him was a little exasperated, like an old joke bandied back and forth between the two of them.

Maria stifled an unreasonable pang of jealousy, and directed Wanda to the bathroom at her request. Then she unfolded the threadbare quilt she’d been sleeping under and laid it out over the couch, before checking the perimeter security on the tablet was correctly reset.

“You’ve been doing this longer than the last ten days,” Steve said from across the room. “You’ve been on the move, I mean.”

“Does it show?”

She hadn’t intended to ask a leading question, but it was out there, and there was no doubting the honesty of his answer. “A little.” After a moment of hesitation, he added, “How have you been, Maria?”

“Oh, the usual. Tired.” She made it light, an almost joking statement. But sometimes it felt like she’d been born tired; out of options, struggling to make ends meet, wondering whether she was doing any good or just marking time. The problem was that voicing that felt too much like complaining instead of trying to fix the problem.

“You haven’t been around lately. Even before the mess with the Accords, you vanished.”

Maria shrugged, flipping through the feeds one by one. “I had things to do. And the Avengers were busy enough; you’d have hardly missed me.”

The words escaped her before she could pull them back – weariness getting the better of her self-control. Yes, they’d been friends while the Avengers were based out of Stark Tower – professional, yet comfortable and easy with each other.

And, yes, she’d been halfway to a crush on him.

Maybe a little over halfway.

“There might not have been much time to see you, but I missed the late night conversations in the Tower lounge. Mission operations.” He paused to rummage in the backpack for something. “Were they jobs for Fury?”

Maria tensed. The matter of her work with Fury had been a point of contention with Steve after Ultron. He’d taken her split loyalties...not badly, but less than well.

_Were you working with Fury all that time we were operating out of Stark Tower?_

_Yes._ Her answer was terse. For a moment, she’d flashed back to Insight Launch Control at the Triskelion, being told that her loyalties to S.H.I.E.L.D were in question. _I’m not sure why you expected anything different._

And Steve’s  _I’m not sure why I expected anything either,_ had stung rather worse than Jasper’s snide dismissal.

She turned around. Steve was sitting on his bedroll, his boots off his feet, unwrapping something from a plastic bag in his lap. He looked up, waiting for her to speak.

“Some of them were,” she said.

“So he’s still alive and around. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” It seemed that Steve was saying it more to himself than to her, even though his gaze rested on her with a look that seemed thoughtful. “What are your plans after you get the Bartons settled?” When she hesitated, he smiled with a rueful tilt to his mouth. “You always have a Plan B, Maria.”

Her Plan B had been to go looking for the Raft. Since that was no longer necessary – at least not for this group – she’d go to Plan C. Plan C involved working out what resources she had left for World Security, if it came to a mad scramble when the aliens were on the verge of invasion, whether that meant going back to the Avengers facility and dealing with Tony without Pepper as the buffering interface, or else going off-road completely.

Then again, now that she had access to Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Falcon, Ant-Man,  _and_ the Black Widow, her options for ‘off-road World Security’ were a lot better than they’d been six hours ago.

“I had a few ideas.”

A few ideas which she wasn’t going to lay out before Steve just yet. And she wasn’t the one on the run from international law enforcement. “Did  _you_ have a Plan B?”

He pulled out a pair of socks and inspected them, as though looking for holes. “I was thinking Mexico.” He glanced up, met her gaze, then reached over and fished in the backpack for a new pair of socks, his used ones apparently not being up to scratch. “Europe’s a little unsettled right now – not only from the situations in Sokovia and Syria, but after the UN bombing. And it’s either small towns or big cities rubbing shoulders with a lot of people. That was what—” He stopped himself, but she could hear the words he didn’t say.  _That was what caught Bucky in the end_ . After a moment, he continued. “If you have any advice, I’ll hear it.”

Hear? Maybe. But heed? Maria doubted it. Steve did as he pleased and you could put up, catch up, or shut up. And she didn’t have the energy to argue. She really wanted some sleep, and daylight would come soon enough, and then they’d have to move on—

Maria was tired of moving on.

Or maybe she was just tired.

“Not now,” she said. Wanda was just coming out of the bathroom, though, and everyone needed sleep. She turned back and set the security app to notify her if anything unusual came up, then rose from the desk. 

“In the morning,” Steve agreed, behind her.

Maria figured she was  _really_ tired, because that sounded like a promise.

* * *

The remaining hours of the night went without further interruption. The kids were already up when Maria came awake, and sitting on Steve asking a million questions while Wanda eyed them from the warm safety of her bedroll. The mundanities of life had to be taken care of – bathrooms and breakfasts. And then, when Steve was moving about cleaning up, Maria sat everyone down at the table and laid out the situation.

“As a family, you’ll pass with less attention than Laura and I did.” They hadn’t been challenged, but Maria had been well aware that they gained more notice as two women and three children in the towns where they stopped, whether for fuel or food or somewhere to stay the night. Even the explanation that they were a mother and an _au pair_ hadn’t quite stopped the sidewise glances in some places.

Clint grinned. “Corrupting the children with your licentious ways?”

“Some licentiousness,” Laura noted with a dry look at Maria. “We never even got to share a bed!”

The problem with the Bartons was primarily that Clint would be recognised by anyone who was an aficionado of the Avengers, or who followed the international news, which made staying in the media and gossip rich culture of the US a tricky proposition.

“There are safehouses out of the US,” Laura pointed out.

“Once we leave the country they won’t let us back in.” Clint had the tone of a man who’d thought this through too many times and imagined bad scenarios in every one.

“We’re American citizens.”

“The kids don’t yet have passports, and I’m an internationally known criminal. It makes a problem of anything that even vaguely smacks of officialdom.”

“Maria can—”

“Maria can do a lot of things, but even she can’t issue the kids American passports that will get them out of the country _and_ back in again.”

Across the breakfast table, Wanda was giving Maria an arched eyebrow that was probably asking if this kind of interaction between the Bartons was normal. Frankly, Maria didn’t know. She hadn’t seen as much of the Bartons’ home life as Natasha had, her communications with either had mostly been individual rather than together.

It was way too early for a domestic, no matter how civil, and she’d only had one cup of coffee this morning. Barton had taken the last cup before Maria could claim it, leaving the pot empty, so there was no chance for any more.

Barton was down to pointing out that millions of undocumented immigrants survived in the USA and many of them thrived. They didn’t have to be official to get along, so long as they stayed clear of the law and anything bureaucratic.

Laura wasn’t looking convinced.

With a deep breath, Maria prepared to head off the conflict – or, at least, defer it until later.

A cup of coffee was set down beside her hand, fragrant black and still steaming, with the spoon still in it.

She looked up at Steve.

“Black, one sugar.” His mouth quirked at the corner. “You only had one cup.”

A little surprised that he’d noticed, it was all Maria could do to say, “Thank you.” She pulled the cup over, and found the others looking at them. “I’m operational on one cup; I’m better on two.”

She took a sip and exhaled on finding it exactly as she liked it. Then she returned to the conversation. “I don’t need to know your exact plans, Clint. But you need to be in contact so we know where to find you.”

Clint gave her a hard look at the plural, knowing exactly who and what she meant. “Does the old man ever let go what he holds?”

“You know the answer to that, Clint.”

Considering Fury had set up Clint’s Little House In The Flyover States, he didn’t really have a leg to stand on there. Still, he rolled his eyes. “Tell him he’s still a pain in the ass, dead or not.”

“Do you think he’d have it any other way?” Maria laid her finger on the next location she’d intended for the Bartons. “I was planning to head here with Laura and the kids; since you’re here, you can go with them instead. Contact is in three days – repeat attempts every six to eight hours for forty-eight hours. If you need help, these are the contact lines.” She handed him the SD card for his phone. “Password is the usual, it’ll route through G.O.D.”

Clint barked a laugh. “The Grand Old Dame’s still operational?”

“And keeping our secrets.”

“Hah.” He studied the SD card for a moment. “Who’s your backup?”

“Akela Amador.”

“Amador? I thought— Where’d they dig her up?”

“Long story.” Involving two years of imprisonment, two more of coerced missions, and a few months waiting for trial by S.H.I.E.L.D before Maria made contact with her in the middle of the take-down. There was definitely no time to tell Clint the full story. “I’ll let her know that you might make contact; and I’ll inform Fury that you’re out.”

“He probably already knows,” Steve murmured as he scrunched up a nutrition bar wrapper. He looked a little rumpled – not so much the worse for wear, just...restless. “So you’re coming with Wanda and me, then?”

“As far as the border. I can give you directions to various safehouses in Mexico and Central and South America, but after that you’re pretty much on your own.”

“We don’t have a car,” Wanda said. “Steve insisted on returning the one we borrowed. With gas and apology money in the glove compartment.”

Laura stared at them, then laughed. “And you’re trying to move  _unnoticed_ ?”

“Setting aside the courtesies of borrowing vehicles without permission,” Maria said primly, “My plans never involved driving to Mexico.”

“So how—?” Steve paused as something buzzed – another proximity alarm. And then another. And another.

Maria switched applications and checked the security feeds. At this hour, the visibility was much better for her, but also required less hiding from their pursuers. “We have an approach on all sides. Plain clothes, but packing.” She could see their concealed carry in the bulk of their jackets, in the billow of their shirts, and they moved with too much purpose to be innocuous.

“They’re not standard military.” Steve was looking over her shoulder, even as the Bartons moved to hustle their children, and Wanda began ‘packing’ everything left around with her telekinesis.

Maria agreed. “Too much swagger.” Which meant that they were either facing mercs, or – rather worse in this situation – HYDRA operatives. “Take the bookcase, use the exit as we planned for last night.” She looked up at Steve. “Did you notice any tails?”

“Not since we got into the country. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there – they might have been biding their time.” He caught the backpack Wanda tossed him, then took Maria’s duffle which the young woman had also packed and passed over. “If we’re not going with them, you’d better tell us how we’re going to get out of town.”

Maria was pulling up a second app, flicked a number of toggles on the screen, and then flipped over to a document she’d saved. “There’s a freight line about eight blocks away, and a train’s due in thirty minutes.”

“Riding the rails?” Steve’s eyes narrowed. “That’s dangerous.”

“More dangerous than HYDRA mercs getting hold of Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Hawkeye’s family?” Maria slid the tablet into her duffle and zipped the pocket closed, then swung it up onto her shoulder. She caught Clint’s eye as he turned back at the bookcase. “Stay in touch.”

“You, too.” He nodded at the others, and then walked into the passage. The bookcase-door closed behind him.

Maria started for the next room – the one with the door leading to the stairs down to the ground level, and the window they’d climbed in last night. “How much distraction and deflection do you have in you right now, Wanda?”

“Enough. Although it would be easier to knock them out with a hex.”

“No knocking them out.” Steve said, and sounded more than a little stern. A point of contention from the trip in?

Apparently so. “No knocking them out.” In that tone of voice, Wanda sounded like Lila when the girl was denied a treat. “Unless they get too close, then I make no promises.”

“You make no promises anyway.”

Maria mentally shook her head as she paused before a glassed balcony door that led out to a tiny rooftop courtyard. Just when she thought she was done with squabbling siblings...

“I think we’re annoying Maria.” Steve’s voice was briefly muffled as he put on a baseball cap and a pair of glasses. Neither disguised him very well – or at all, really – but the beard scruff helped change the shape of his face. “What’s the way out?”

“Across the roof, if Wanda can keep us hidden.” She glanced at the young woman, who was just tucking her distinctive hair up under a cap and received a nod. “There’s another balcony that leads into a paralegal office that doesn’t usually open until 9:30am. We’ll go out that way.”

“Steve doesn’t approve of breaking and entering,” Wanda said primly, even as a shifting scarlet glow coiled around her hands like smoke.

“Actually,” Maria noted, “it’ll be trespassing, not B&E.” 

A glance at Wanda showed her making a pushing motion that apparently completed whatever hex the young woman was creating, and she gave Maria the nod.

Outside, the world had a morning haze, glowing with the promise of a warm, early summer day. Fluffs of white streaked the blue sky, trailing west, as the sun rose over low hills, spilling light down across the township.

No shouts accompanied their exit from the building, although they were in full sunlight and Maria could see at least one man surveying the rooftops. Rather than ask what Wanda was doing, she simply vaulted the balcony railing, walked briskly along the roof ridge to the next balcony and climbed over the railing there. She heard the door of the safehouse close behind Steve, and fished out the keys, flipping through them until she had one that fit the upper lock.

“And of course you’ve got the keys.”

“Isn’t this better than breaking in?”

Technically, the key was a skeleton key, made to open any door of this type. But Steve didn’t need to know that. Maria pulled the door open and stepped into the office. This one was an office, complete with shelves, filing cabinets, and a desk with a solid desktop computer, mouse, and laser printer. It looked like an office straight out of the previous decade – which it basically was.

“Family solicitors,” she said as she stepped over to the office door and opened it. “Most of their business is in wills and property transfer. Solid and upstanding firm, and the senior partner is old-school – he doesn’t require staff to be in until at least 9am and he’s not fussed if it’s later.”

Wanda made a noise that was distinctly like a snort as they went through the outer office – junior solicitors, and the office manager at the front desk. “Do you always do such research when choosing safehouses?”

“If I don’t, it’s not really ‘safe’ is it?” Maria unlocked the glass door that led out to the stairs which went down towards the parking lot at the back of the offices. “Pull it shut behind you, and there’ll be no sign we were even there. And then we’ll just nip out the back and take the dark blue Ford F150.”

“Do you have keys for that, too?”

“I’m feeling very judged right now,” Maria noted dryly. “No. But the owner is nice enough to leave the keys in the sunvisor. Same way you probably borrowed the car that got you here.”

“Clearly leaving your cars with the keys in them is a thing that you do in America.” 

Maria snorted as she reached the bottom of the stairs and half-turned with her hand on the doorknob leading out to the parking lot. “Some parts of it, yeah, and some people maybe. It’s a big country.”

“So I am starting to see.” Wanda turned and shot Steve a look as he came down the last few stairs.

“It’s not the best way to see the country.”

“I am enjoying it more than through the television screen.”

“We shouldn’t have let them confine you to the facility like you were some kind of prisoner,” Steve said as Maria threw the door open and strode out into the morning light like they belonged there. “We thought ‘softly-softly’ was the better way to go and we were wrong. I won’t let them do that next time.”

Maria wondered about that as she swung her duffle casually into the empty truck bed. But she climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the keys from the visor without comment while the other two stashed their backpacks, and climbed in the passenger side.

The truck started on the first attempt, and she eased out of the lot. Wanda’s hands were barely moving as she mimed pushing something towards the various men acting as lookouts for whoever had come to find them. At least one lookout watched them drive right past them, but didn’t react.

It wasn’t until they were at the next set of traffic lights that Wanda exhaled and leaned back against the seat. “It’s getting easier.”

“You’ve had a lot of practice lately.”

Maria glanced over at them. That had sounded regretful. And, indeed, Steve’s expression was tight and unhappy.

“Not everything is your fault, you know,” Wanda said sharply. “Is that not what you told me after Lagos?”

He huffed, a breath of laughter, and met Maria’s eyes. “Not quite.” Then he looked out the window as though embarrassed. “But your point is taken.”

Wanda sat back, saw Maria looking at them and arched a brow in challenge.

The lights ahead of them turned green and Maria turned her attention back to the road. She’d mapped the route out in her head, taking the time to be sure of where she was going. She’d need someone to navigate as they got closer, and if they missed the train then the truck owner was going to be missing his vehicle for a couple of days, not just a morning, but she’d planned for that, too.

“So,” Steve said as they turned onto a county road. “Exactly where were you planning to have us hop a train?”

Maria pulled out her smartphone, fingerprint accessed it, and tapped the map application she was using. The location she’d picked was still up. “There. Do a GPS pinpoint on our location and tell me how far we are.”

“Doesn’t a GPS make you trackable?”

“Yes. And no.” Maria kept her eyes on the road. “Barton’s family wasn’t the only thing off the record at S.H.I.E.L.D. We had a few small and useful technologies which HYDRA didn’t know about when it came down – largely because they were developed when Fury realised there was a problem in the first place.”

“The ‘Grand Old Dame’?”

“It’s a satellite. Among other things.” To deter Steve from asking who it had been named for, Maria asked, “How far are we?”

“Fifteen minutes out.” Steve glanced around, orienting their location with the map. “Didn’t you say there was a freight train coming by in half an hour?”

“We’ll make it.” Maria spoke with more authority than she felt.

As she drove through the outskirts of the medium-sized town, she watched out not only for the traffic, but also for any signs that there were cops on the lookout for them. She’d picked the truck for convenience rather than for security, so it was always possible the truck’s owner had found out about the ‘unauthorised lend’ after they drove off and had contacted the police, although she hoped not.

They reached the field near where they were going to ride the train, and Maria parked the truck at the edge of the road and slipped the keys back in the visor. Wanda had already put a small wad of notes in the glove compartment – and had done it telekinetically rather than leaving fingerprints. Clearly, they had considerable experience at this already.

The freight train was visible in the distance, a long line stretching back and back and back through the landscape.

“And we are supposed to just jump on while it passes us?”

Maria shrugged as she slung the strap of her duffle across her body and adjusted the weight. “It should slow enough that we can run alongside it and swing ourselves onto one of the boxcars. This one usually off-loads pallets at Liberal, so there’ll be some which are empty.”

A glance over at Steve showed him clipping the front strap of his backpack on and frowning at the oncoming train. “It’s coming along pretty fast.”

“There’s a switching yard a quarter mile along.” She carefully climbed into the ditch between the field and the chain-link fence that separated the train line. “It’ll start slowing down soon. When it does, we’ll need to wait until the first six cars have gone past, then get out of the ditch, jump the fence and find a car with a ladder to get on. Grab a rung, swing yourself up, get inside before we hit the switching yard. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“You seem very familiar with this process.”

She shrugged, avoiding both Wanda’s eagle-eyed gaze and Steve’s narrow-eyed study, and simply admitting, “I have some experience.”

As the distant rumble of the engine grew, the ground beneath them shook, trembling with the mass of the freight cars travelling along it. The dirt in the ditch rattled and rumbled, and heat and smoke and diesel backwash swept over them in an odorous wave as the engines passed by. Even as they listened, she heard the noise of the engines change – slowing the train down so they wouldn’t roar through the switching yard.

Maria counted the rise and fall of the sound of wheels, the way the noise changed as a break between cars happened. When she hit eight cars, she poked her head out to check. Still a long line of cars, and she could see the glimmer of light through slats on some of them, indicating cars that were empty of cargo. There might already be riders in those carriages – it was high summer, one of the busiest times of year – but she wasn’t worried about the hobos. They’d be harmless enough, particularly with Steve around.

She scrambled up. “Let’s go.”

They were out of the ditch and over the fence in a minute, standing by the rail as the train slowed, slowed, slowed...

No boxcars in this section. Maria squinted down the line and could see a long string of boxcars coming, but in the meantime they were more exposed than she liked.

“Police,” Steve said, indicating further along down the road on which they’d driven.

Maria grimaced and stepped back to survey the train. “The green one,” she said, taking Wanda’s arm and pulling her along into an easy jog. “Steve, you’ll need to pull the door open for us. Please.”

He was pacing them and the train, not even breathing hard, and shot Maria a tight smile. “I’m an international terrorist according to the UN.” The tightness around his eyes belied the light words. “At this point, it seems there’s nothing that’s beneath me.”

He sprinted back until he’d reached the carriage right before the one Maria had chosen. By this time, the train had slowed even further, and Steve reversed direction, running alongside so he could jump and catch the handle. His other hand caught the edge of the door, and muscles strained as he shoved the door open a mere ten yards from Maria and Wanda.

“Go on!” Maria shoved Wanda ahead of her. “Grab the edge of the door and swing yourself up.”

Wanda glanced at her, a slightly disgusted look on her face. Then, with a faint glow of scarlet, she  _flew_ into the narrow aisle by the boxcar.

Maria didn’t have time to kick herself. The train wasn’t slowing much more and there was a small hole coming up—

“Maria—!” Steve had swung his feet up into the car and was holding onto the frame of the door, his booted foot blocking the door from sliding shut. He thrust out a hand towards her, and Maria reached for it—

She felt the rock strike her toe – solid and jarring. Her whole body jerked and she felt herself falling. Her hands went out to cushion her landing, and she probably wouldn’t break anything but it was going to  _hurt—_

No impact.

The ground was soaring along below her – she was floating above it, moving faster than the train. Her first instinct was to struggle – _what the hell?_ Then it was all she could do to hold herself rigid as Wanda pulled her alongside the door. A moment later, a hand wrapped around her wrist and Steve hauled her hard up against him with one arm, yanking the door shut with the other.

The door lock clicked into place and the train trundled on.

Her pulse was thudding in her ears, nearly as loud as the vibration of the wheels beneath them. Her fingers flexed and curled in reflexive instinct as the adrenaline hummed through her body. It quivered in her as she took long, deep breaths – musty air, old oil, and warm male scent. Beneath her pressed fingertips, another beat drummed in counterpoint – a heartbeat similarly pounding.

She looked up into Steve’s face, close enough to feel the puff of his breath against her cheek as he exhaled, slow and brisk. Apparently catching the train had been a little dramatic for him, too. She closed her eyes and let her shoulders sag in relief, giving herself a couple of relieved breaths to stand against him, big and warm with his arm still hard around her waist. Then she lifted her head.

“Thanks for that.” She said it to Steve, but included Wanda by turning her head to meet the young woman’s gaze.

Wanda was staring at them, the scarlet glow off her hands illuminating her face, and making the shadows of the car seem very deep by comparison. After a moment she dropped her gaze to Maria, and the scarlet coil about her fingers formed into a little ball of light that rose to hang above and in front of her head as she shrugged, careless. “Well, I could not leave you behind, could I?”

Maria didn’t point out that she would have been okay – a little bruised, perhaps, but still capable of making her own way. And Wanda and Steve would have worked out how to get across the border eventually.

She looked up at Steve who still hadn’t released her. In the reddish light, he seemed a little drawn, the corners of his mouth pinched as he looked down at her. “Rogers?” Maria prompted. He was still holding her, and the adrenaline was making her really want to grab his head and pull him down into a kiss. If he didn’t back off, she might do something she couldn’t take back.

Steve blinked, as though recalling himself. “Sorry.”

As he let her go and moved further into the carriage, Maria didn’t heave a sigh of relief. She turned to Wanda, asking a question with her expression.  _Is he okay?_ The only response she got was a shrug and a look that seemed distinctly ingenuous, even in the shadows.

All right, then.

Digging out her phone, Maria turned on the flashlight to get a better look at where they’d landed.

It was an older car – the smell of rust and old oil filled the air, and the cardboard boxes on wooden pallets added a musty scent to the place. The bills of lading she checked as she walked along the row nearest the door were El Paso, so they probably wouldn’t have to worry about the ‘bulls’ – or train police – coming by to hassle them off. If the bulls did come along, well, there were ways of dealing with them, although in this situation it would be better to run from them than to risk being identified.

But they were safe – at least for the moment.

She returned from her exploration, and found Steve and Wanda had set themselves up in a narrow ‘alley’ between some cardboard shipping cartons. They’d picked opposite sides of the alley to sit against, facing each other so their backs were against the carton ‘walls’ and their feet were against the sides of the boxes.

Steve was chewing on an energy bar, slow, methodical bites. Wanda had her eyes closed and her head tilted back. The red glowing ‘light’ hung in the air above them casting scarlet-tinged shadows through the space.

Maria settled down beside Steve – there was a space she presumed had been left for her, her duffle marking the outer ‘edge’ of their territory. “How much food do you have in there?”

“Enough for a day, maybe two.”

“So we’ll need to jump off somewhere before then,” she said, calculating towns and places that might be of use – although taking him anywhere was going to be a risk—

His hand came down on her knee, unexpected tactility, and she tensed. The warmth of his palm seeped through her jeans leg, and the weight of his gaze burned beneath her breastbone. “You don’t have to calculate everything right now, Maria.” Steve jerked his chin at her duffle. “And you’re tired. You said it last night, and you haven’t gotten much sleep since then. So sleep now – while we’ve got time.”

She stared at him for a moment, then looked at Wanda, who had lifted her lashes a fraction and was watching them beneath slitted eyes. Then she shrugged. It was no skin off her back. “Okay.” There’d be time enough to work out the details before things became urgent. Probably.

Maria pulled the old quilt and a thicker jacket out of her duffle, eased the folded quilt beneath her to soften the wooden floor, and laid the jacket reversed over her shoulders to keep her warm. Then she tilted her head back against the carboard box behind her, closed her eyes, and let the rhythm of the rails lull her to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi recipient! I hope you enjoyed it! I tried to incorporate some of your bulletproof loves, but they're more like touches to the story than the main bulk of it. I had ideas for taking the characters all the way to the Mexican border and over, but life and a shortage of time conspired against me. If I can get some things sorted out in the next day, it will hopefully be added during the anonymous reveals period. (Also: thank you for your response to the question I sent through the mods; I really appreciated the prompt and enthusiastic answer.)


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